When there’s no right answer

The first time I used the phrase, “there’s no right answer”, I was in medical school, and the faculty leading the small-group discussion repeated it after I said it. I feel this phrase has come to define much of my young adulthood and training. In many aspects of life, there’s truly no correct answer or way to go about matters—we all live in shades of gray. This contrasts with the engineering and highly technical education I received at university, where there is, most of the time, an objectively “best” or “correct” answer. 

Perhaps that’s also partly why I left medical school. I was not in tune with that line of thinking in my youth. I didn’t know how to operate in those shades of gray. As an engineer, I needed concrete answers and black-and-white guarantees to feel comfortable. In many regards, I still sort of need that.

I wonder how all of that will translate to an architecture education? Architecture clearly has subjective components, and there are aspects with no “best” answer. However, the process is iterative, and the work is intensive, much like in medicine. It’s just a completely different field, with more of a foundation in engineering principles rather than biological principles. In that sense, I’m looking forward to it because I sort of have all those bases covered.